In the misty moment of her epiphany, Cassie believed that she and her husband loved and were loyal to each other in the way that husbands and wives were supposed to love and be loyal. But quite frankly, she also wished he were dead so she could be a widow with all the pleasures that accrued to the state. A silly thought, she knew. Death wouldn't help her.

Years ago, before she and Mitch were married and before her mother got cancer and died, she and her mother had foraged one day for treasure in an antiques store for the perfect Valentine's Day gift for her father. And they found it in a dusty frame with bars standing out in bas-relief across the sepia photo of a female lion lying in a cage with a male lion standing protectively by her side. Under the ancient photo was the title:LIFE SENTENCE. The idea of no way out but death had amused them then. Seventeen years after her mother died, Cassandra's father still had it on his bedside table. He never remarried. After he died, Cassandra kept it on her own desk for seven more years. And all the time, her own face slowly squared off to look like the face of her dead mother, frozen just at the beginning of middle age, only a year older than Cassie was now. Cassie's own life sentence had no end in sight, nor did she really want it to. For her, simple divorce was out of the question and widowhood wasn't at all likely; her husband came from the old school and resisted everything. No, death or divorce wouldn't do. A real change in herself was required.

That fateful day in April, soon after crossing the chasm of fifty, Cassie saw beauty waving at her from the other side. In a split second she decided on the surgical overhaul, and there was no turning back. In a few short days she'd read every magazine and book on the subject and obtained a consultation with an upcoming plastic surgeon who had delusions of grandeur.

The artist in flesh was certain he could make her over as she had been as a blushing bride. On the enormous TV screen in his office he projected her as she had been with round cheeks, smiling lips, and wide, hopeful eyes. She'd been a beauty. The surgeon was as totally inspired by the youthful Cassie as Cassie was depressed to have lost her. He liked her spirit and her little plot. She wanted to have the procedures done while her husband was away on a business trip, to heal while he was gone, and to surprise the passion right back into him upon his return. Would that it were so simple. The confident surgeon, however, saw no flaws in the plan and agreed to fit her in quickly. She charged the surgery to American Express for the True Rewards. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Cassie never considered the possibility of unanticipated consequences.

A MONTH LATER, at the end of May, seven days after her surgery, however, Cassie k new she'd made a truly appalling mistake. Her dos and don'ts folder said she would feel "mild discomfort" in her first two postop days. And "minor" swelling. Excruciating pain was what she felt and major swelling. The Time Line of Recovery in her Instructions for Aftercare predicted that she would feel entirely better after the first week and looking forward to total recovery and miraculous results.

Cassie was feeling worse and worse as the days went on. It was almost as if the great upcoming surgeon she'd chosen to turn her lights back On had made a little mistake and switched her power button to Off. She looked really terrible. Her eyes were so black-and-blue and swollen, she could hardly see a thing. Everything hurt. She couldn't eat because she wasn't allowed to open her mouth wide enough to chew. Worst of all, she didn't care about any of the things she used to care about: the skirmishes between the Democrats and Republicans, the latest in the abortion wars. The Middle East. Beauty. She was way, way down, depressed, angry.

And her beautiful, smart daughter, Marsha, now twenty-five, was no help in the reassurance department. Marsha was on vacation from social work school that week and had returned home to take care of Cassie, to drive her back and forth from her postop visits to the doctor, and so forth. Marsha turned out to be less supportive of the event than Cassie might have predicted, so the visit had taken on a surreal quality.

In her youth, Marsha had been something of a chore to her mother. As a teenager, she'd had every color hair possible. She'd worn slut dresses up to her butt from the age of twelve on. She'd stuck pieces of metal in her tongue and nose and eyebrow and navel, then protested angrily when anyone said something. She'd smoked pot in the backyard, crashed the Volvo station wagon into Cassie's favorite dogwood while trying to prove she could turn the car around in the driveway without benefit of driving lessons (when she was not yet thirteen) on the very first day Cassie had brought it home. She'd been caught in a neighbor's hot tub naked with three boys. For a number of years she'd weighed 170. She'd taunted her mother, worn army boots and grunge. She'd failed Italian. Twice. The girl got 1400 on her SATs, but school counselors thought she'd never make it to college. When she got to college, she constantly threatened to not make it through.

That completely loved and accepted girl (no matter what she did) had metamorphosed into the Marsha of today. Somehow she'd lost about 150 pounds. She was down to nothing at all. Her hair was no longer pink. Or green or purple. It was tawny. She was cooking. She was bathing wounds. She was cleaning the house. Sort of. She was fielding the phone calls from her mother's benefit-giving buddies, lying to cover for her so no one would know what an asshole her mother had been.

Marsha didn't want anyone to know how bad things were. She was screaming at the doctor because her mother's face looked as if it were rejecting itself. She was demanding attention and care, and she was getting it. She was scolding and nursing her own mother. She was a fierce and ferocious disapproving protector. It was downright weird. Their roles were completely reversed.

On the Friday, seven days after Cassie's surgery, at twelve noon, Cassie had the final stitches removed from her eyes. On the trip home she felt utterly defeated because the doctor had refused to remove the stitches located around and in her ears, as well as a myriad of staples hidden in her scalp. He'd told her they weren't done yet. What was she, a roasting chicken? She was further upset because she didn't look like anybody she'd ever seen in her whole life (least of all herself), and her face felt like somebody else's, too. The numbness in her cheeks and chin that no one had told her would occur in the first place persisted, and she was beginning to suspect that feeling in those areas might never return.

As soon as she got home, she climbed the stairs to her room and sat on the closed toilet seat in her bathroom completely demoralized. Mitch, who traveled a lot more than he was at home, was in Italy at the moment, blissfully unaware of her distress. As he was blissfully unaware of most everything. He was no doubt checking out the Nebbiolo grapes in Piedmont or the Sangiovese grapes in Tuscany, the short- or long-vatting of producers, haggling for prices or position in the distribution chain, and making money they never spent. She longed for and resented him in equal proportions. Marsha, who'd been uncharacteristically nice for a whole week, was now taking her new and stunning self back to social work school. In her defeated situation, Cassie couldn't help thinking that sometimes her daughter was just as annoying as a do-gooder as she'd been as a teenage nightmare. Cassie loved and resented her in equal proportions, too.

After all she'd been through, it turned out that she was going to be all alone with herself once again. And she'd become someone she detested with no reservations whatsoever.